KARMALAHANG, India—When the call came from New Delhi, Punita Devi braced herself for the worst. Her husband, she learned, had been sentenced to death by hanging.

Akshay Kumar Singh and three other men were convicted this month of a crime that focused the world's attention on violence against women in India: the gang rape and killing of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in December.

For the parents of the woman who died, the sentencing brought a measure of closure. For Ms. Devi, who is in her 20s, and her 2-year-old son, her husband's crime and punishment have opened up a chapter of profound uncertainty.

A Rape That Shocked the World

The WSJ profiles the victims and the accused in last year's death in New Delhi, and examines the deep-seated problem of harassment of women in India.

The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins present an e-book that provides the most informative and in-depth reporting on crimes against women on the subcontinent and will aid in the national dialogue about how India can better treat its women. Buy the book here.

Ms. Devi expects to be cast out by her in-laws and face ostracism and destitution here in India's conservative hinterland—not because she is married to a convicted murderer, but because she is a woman without a husband. "As a widow, my honor will be lost forever," she says.

Her husband's relatives say they can't afford to feed her. Her parents say they are too poor to take her back. The customs of purdah practiced in the region make it almost impossible for her to work outside the home.

"I am not educated. Our traditions are such that I cannot even step out of the house," Ms. Devi said. "Who will earn money to feed me and my son?"

In the village where Ms. Devi lives in eastern Bihar state with her husband's family, women are kept veiled and largely secluded. They can't leave home without a male relative. Ms. Devi must wait until dark simply to go into the field behind her house to defecate.

Such attitudes may seem out of character in a country that had its first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the 1960s, and that today boasts high-profile women politicians and executives. But India's countryside, home to nearly 70% of its 1.2 billion people, can be a stifling place, where women live highly circumscribed lives and lack freedoms their urban, middle-class counterparts are starting to enjoy.

It can also be a hostile place. In villages crimes against women often aren't reported to police, and cases are settled by elders enforcing custom rather than law.

Ms. Devi's misfortune to be married to a notorious convict makes her situation seem extraordinary. But in fact, the basic difficulties she now faces are a reality of life in the Indian countryside. For the poorest, a single setback—loss of a breadwinner, lackluster crop, illness—can propel a family into crisis. For rural women, it can be especially dire.

Ms. Devi grew up in a small village about 80 miles from Karmalahang. Her family farms a one-acre plot in a perennially drought-stricken district of Jharkhand state. Ms. Devi says she is 21 years old, although school records in her home village give her age as 24.

She has three older sisters and a younger brother. She was pulled out of school after the sixth grade by her parents so she could cook and clean after her mother became ill. Her sisters all had either left home or were about to, and her parents decided it was more important for their son to be educated than a daughter.

Across India, literacy among women lags behind that of men. In rural areas, less than 60% of women can read, according to Indian census data, compared with 80% of men.

Ms. Devi says she can write her name and a few Hindi words, and read a bit. She knew from an early age, she says, what was expected of a woman: to raise children and take care of household tasks.

ENLARGE

Punita's brother, Suneshwar Singh.
Junho Kim/The Wall Street Journal

"I learned how I had to behave when I got married and went to my in-laws' house just by watching my mother," says Ms. Devi.

Her mother, Lilavati Devi, says she was a child when she was married to her husband, Raj Mohan Singh, who was a few years older. Now 60, Lilavati Devi has spent most of her adult life within the confines of her small, mud-walled home.

Many women in this part of India use Devi as their last name. The word means "goddess" in Hindi. But it isn't a sign of the relative status of women. "To us, husbands are our gods," says Sudha Devi, a government health worker in Karmalahang and no relation to Punita Devi. "We can't think of being equal."

Ms. Devi's parents arranged her marriage to Mr. Singh in 2010. The connection was made through a woman from a neighboring village who was married to one of Mr. Singh's older brothers.

"I wasn't forced into it, but it was a decision taken by my parents. This is how it works here in the countryside," Ms. Devi says. "In a woman's life, marriage and her husband are everything."

Both families belong to the relatively high-ranking Rajput caste and are farmers. "It was a fine match," says Lilavati Devi. In May 2010 she sent her daughter off with a simple dowry: a wooden bed and some kitchen utensils.

"I told her to live well and peacefully with her family—her new family," Lilavati Devi says.

The first two years of marriage went smoothly. Her husband Mr. Singh, 28, is the youngest of three brothers. So Ms. Devi settled into a household that included not just her parents-in-law, but also Mr. Singh's siblings and their wives and children.

Her new village, Karmalahang, is about 18 miles from the Grand Trunk Road, a commercial route since ancient times that connects Kolkata in eastern India to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and sits at the foot of the Kaimur Hills.

The mountains block water-laden air and create what is known as a rain shadow over Karmalahang, making farming for the 1,500 people here a precarious existence. That, combined with a lack of industry, drives many young men from the area to head to cities for jobs.

Mr. Singh and his brothers, none of whom finished high school, were no exception. From their earnings, each would send about $30 to $45 a month to support the extended family.

"I never asked him where he was or what he was doing," says Ms. Devi. "I knew he went to earn money."

In June 2011, Ms. Devi gave birth to a son. The child was prone to lung infections, but Mr. Singh's earnings were enough to pay for monthly doctor's visits and medicine.

During a visit home in August 2012, Mr. Singh brought his wife a mobile phone so they could speak while he was away. He said he had been working at a liquor store in the Jharkhand city of Dhanbad.

Before he headed out again—this time to Delhi—he gave her $20, which she used to buy a shirt for their son as well as fruit from the local market for the child, among other things.

Ms. Devi didn't see her husband again until December. The date is a matter of dispute. In an interview in early August, Ms. Devi and her father-in-law said Mr. Singh returned home on Dec. 21, a day after police had come looking for him in connection with the Dec. 16 gang rape in Delhi.

ENLARGE

Punita's mother, Lilavati Devi.
Junho Kim/The Wall Street Journal

The crime was already making headlines across India. But Karmalahang has no electricity to power televisions, and newspapers aren't available here. When Mr. Singh came home, he "didn't look noticeably worried or tense," Ms. Devi says, though he had grown a beard.

Since then Ms. Devi and Mr. Singh's other family members have changed their account of his homecoming. They testified in court later in August that he actually returned to the village on Dec. 15, before the Delhi attack occurred. Mr. Singh's lawyer, A.P. Singh, no relation, made that the cornerstone of his defense.

The trial judge, Yogesh Khanna, rejected the alibi. In his judgment, he cited inconsistencies in the family's testimony, a contradictory version of events from the police and witnesses and physical evidence linking Mr. Singh to the crime scene—a bus on which he served as a helper.

Since Mr. Singh's December arrest, his family has been thrown into upheaval. His brothers, Vinay and Abhay, who had also been working around Delhi, left their jobs for three months to help out at home, straining household finances. The family's reputation has been damaged.

"They treat us as untouchables," says Abhay Singh, who works in a paint factory in a Delhi suburb.

"We have gone back from where we were, and from now on it will be an endless slide backwards," says Vinay Singh, who works in a textile-dying plant.

In April, Ms. Devi took an overnight train trip to New Delhi, her first visit to the capital, to see her husband in jail. When she caught her first glimpse of him through the glass partition in the visitors' area, she says, she started to cry.

"Keep yourself and the child well," Mr. Singh told her, according to Ms. Devi. She says he told her: "I will come home. I am innocent."

But without her husband's wages, Ms. Devi says, she hasn't been able to get medical treatment for her son. The child's diet is also suffering, as mother and child subsist on handouts from Mr. Singh's brothers and their wives.

"I feel weak," says Ms. Devi. "Nobody thinks well of a woman whose husband isn't with her for support."

Some people blame the December gang rape and similar attacks in part on a collision of traditional social expectations—commonplace in rural areas—and the modernity of India's cities, where rural migrant workers encounter the values of urbanites living by a different set of rules. During the brutal Delhi assault, for instance, the attackers accosted the woman and the young man she was with, asking why they were out together in the evening, the young man told the court.

Speaking about the events of that night, Ms. Devi says she doesn't understand how a woman could be out for the evening with a man who wasn't her husband.

That night, the two victims had been to a movie at an upscale shopping mall. They were attacked after they boarded a bus. The woman was raped and sexually assaulted with a metal bar, resulting in numerous injuries to her internal organs. The two were dumped, naked and bleeding, by the roadside. The young woman ultimately died of her injuries.

It is too simple to say, however, that there is an urban-rural values split. Mr. Singh's lawyer in New Delhi, A.P. Singh, said after Friday's sentencing that if his daughter insisted on having premarital sex, he would "burn her to death." When asked about the comments, he said "any Indian household in the right frame of mind" would feel the same about premarital sex.

A.P. Singh said he would appeal the guilty verdict against Ms. Devi's husband. That process could take years.

In a written statement from the convict, Mr. Singh, provided by his lawyer, he said of his wife: "She should be strong and fight. She should seek employment. I want her to live. I want her to educate our son and make him a good man. When he grows up, I want him to know the truth about me, that I am innocent."

But Ms. Devi herself worries that time is running out. Her in-laws, Sarju Singh and Malati Devi, say they don't have enough savings to continue supporting Ms. Devi and her son. Mr. Singh's brothers say their earnings are barely enough to support their own wives and children.

Using the cellphone her husband gave her last year, Ms. Devi calls her mother. "What can I do?" she asks, according to Lilavati Devi. Her mother, in tears, says she has no answer to give her.

"Had she been educated, she would have earned for herself," she says, sitting near a picture of her daughter, dressed in a green sari. In the photo, she is standing before a garden backdrop, wearing a half smile.

Ms. Devi's father, Raj Mohan Singh, says his daughter can't return to the home he and his wife share with their son's family. "We won't be able to look after her," he says. "Her brother can't support her, either. He isn't able to look after himself. How can he look after Punita?"

Ms. Devi doesn't know where to turn. "Is there anyone who is thinking of me?" she asked, crying after learning of the death sentence. "I am alive and I have a small child who is still breathing."

The US has its own problems, but I thought this WSJ article was educational. We should care about humans and all sentient creatures where ever they are. Ideally would should help others systematically, but I see nothing wrong with some people trying to help the woman in this story, even if there are others worse off.

While females in other countries may be much worse off than males in their own country, poor men in the US are much worse off than poor women in the US. There are many more homeless males than homeless females in the US, and many more males living in poverty, than females living in poverty.

There are many more males living in squalor than females. This is because females not only get aid from the government, they get aid from male suitors, and they often get more aid from their family.

More often than not when a male and female have equal status in a relationship, the female controls the relationship.

Where US females suffer physical abuse more often than US males, US males in relationships suffer emotional and verbal abuse more often than females. Sometimes words can hurt more fists, especially when those words come from someone you try your hardest to appease.

Many males guilty of physical abuse are themselves victims of extreme verbal and emotional abuse.

While there are all kinds of resources available for females trapped in abusive relationships, there are no resources available for males trapped in abusive relationships.

Nice guys often find the only females interested in them are overbearing and abusive. Whereas kind-hearted, good-natured females mostly only fall in love with overbearing, aggressive, abusive males. There are probably evolutionary reasons for this.

Of course, your personal experiences are probably different than mine. In professional circles the situation is different. I managed many low-rent properties, so I had a chance to observe many different worlds.

In lower socioeconomic classes males who are not macho, aggressive, and violent have no value.

There are many more lonely males than lonely females. Females are much more picky when it comes to choosing a partner. Females will reject all males unless they meet a laundry list of criteria.

Where many poor males will accept any female partner, poor females will automatically reject any male partner who is shorter, weaker, or makes less money than they make.

In the US, we care more about females than we care about males. More people are willing to help females than males. We assume males ought to be able to take care of themselves.

I know lots of wealthy nice guys who can't find partners. I know lots of mentally ill, unattractive females, with horrid personalities who don't have two nickels to rub together who have their choice of partners. If these females were male, no one would have any interest in them, no one would care if they lived or died.

Ah, yes. Modern India. When I was there years ago, there were open pit toilets, bad water everywhere, cars designed in the 1940s, filth, gods every place, institutionalized poverty, ....even the money was infected with nasty bacteria! If you go there, always stay in a top hotel. They have their own water treatment plants!

Back when I was in college I had a classmate from India. I told him I'd never been to his country, but had always wanted to go there someday. His response: "Why???" He felt his homeland was a terrible place and the U.S. infinitely better in comparison.

So many Indian Gurus came to the U.S. and chided us for being "materialistic," but championed India as the "land of spirituality." So much for spirituality when it produces a culture so very high in corruption and so low in compassion. And hygiene.

Sometimes I wish there was an underground organization that could spirit these poor souls and their children out of these scary places and take them to a more enlightened land. If she had access to education, healthcare and decent food, who knows what she could be? It's so sad that empathy and humanity are clearly missing from her hopeless little village.

THis is yet another heart-rending story about the "morals" practiced in primitive villages. The mid-east has not a monopoly on these practices.This is a great story, and probably the tip of the iceberg. Poverty is the over-arching director, but so is plain fear of change.

This story hits the nerve. Very sad. Maybe India should stop its Mars exploration program and institute programs to better educate people and provide incentives for job creation.

India has a long way to go to liberate its folks from the medieval mindset. Just a few success stories of women doing well in a nation of billion plus people does not really reflect the true picture of the country

India has a lot of work to do if it wants to be counted as a civilized, democratic, and respectable member of this world's nations. What a primitive and backward philosophy, what a disaster these customs and traditions are for India. It will be many decades before these folks will act decently towards each other and the females in their midst. Shame on you and your so called "customs". A stain on humanity.

An American family would starve along with the wife and her child, period. What are these ppl thinking, aborting females and banishing them from their homes? She is family. That is their GRANDCHILD too! Why do we do business with a country that allows this? And no, say all you want about culture, tradition, blah. Call me a bigot while you are at it. These are a heartless, soulless people who deserve the nukes the Pakistanis have aimed at them. I hope both nations mutually annihilate one another in my lifetime.

very sad indeed. This shows that India is no better than some of the most backward countries on issues like this. A grown up man never faces a problem but the cultural and traditional customs put women and children in the most dangerous position and make their lives prey to mean men of the society. She may end up as a prey for ruthless men in that village and she may end up selling her child or send him as a servant to survive. Apparently, the voters in india don't care about issue like this.

a superb piece of journalism. a fascinating looking to a society and culture far from our own. it is impossible not to feel for this woman and her beautiful boy. what will become of them? they are victims, too. that isn't to compare her suffering to that of the brutalized woman who lost her life. but her story is sad nonetheless.

You make some excellent points about an issue I rarely see discussed. I would only point out that there are women who actually *want* a nice guy. I found that there were subtle things about me that attracted, & attracted me too, the wrong women, & was able to change that & meet my wife, 20 years ago. So there is hope. Thank you for your insights.

Your comment points out what I have figured out years ago, "Nice" is a four-letter-word used to depict someone that you can treat like excrement and not feel the least bit guilty about, particularly when used by a woman to describe a male

I spoke to a woman in the US who had an Indian client. The Indian woman was quite surprised that people will sometimes help those down and out here. The woman said she admires it but that it is not something Indians do for one another

Great!!! so what you have done recently to help India or its culture? Let me guess.... NOTHING. Complaining is always easy buddy - solutions and its implementation is a real challenge. You can be a cry baby or bring the actual change. Let me help you here - you have two options 1. if you are in India (and I don't think you are) then just visit your local school. Help the students. Visit local community centers - see if you can help them. Donate your old books - trust me Indian people love reading them even if they are poor. 2. If you are not in India - then at least promote positive message to other Indian people. See - if they can do / implement things. Anyway.. it is easy to cry but difficult to implement.

You seem to have missed the point of the article: Tradition. You have a fraction of the people which are advanced and pursuing a modern society and are capable of creating a space program, and yet that fraction of the population is larger than the population of most countries in the world, including possibly the United States. And yet there is the majority of the population that holds on to their traditions which are more important to them than money. So you think that those people who CHOOSE to develop a space program should be punished by those that choose to hold onto their timeheld traditions?

You live in your world with your smartphones and laptop computers and you have to realize that YOU represent the minority and it is YOU that is the odd one out.

If the husband was sending $30-45 a month to "support the family" that tells us that $30 a month is all that would be necessary to convince the family of the deadbeat husband from kicking her out.

That's not correct. It is like saying - transfer wealth from Rich to poor by taxing "Rich" heavily. ISRO has done excellent job of research and development in not just space area but overall technology innovation. Latest cyclone "Phailin" is a great example where ISRO satellites helped our poor Indian state "Odisa". I do understand your frustration of incorrect use of tax money but ISRO/Mars exploration is actually superb use of that money instead of another corruption scam in some community program. I think we should stop complaining - and start doing e.g. you can visit your local school - once in a month or a week - just to give guest lecture. Or donate some books/equipments. I don't think money is the problem - what we need is solution and people who can actually work on it. Complaining is always easy.

* More total number of women work outside their homes in India, than in the United States. See the links posted on tab 4 thru 6 of this forum.

* The problem is their socialist economy. Over 100 million cannot find good jobs, 10s of millions of talented women are unemployed, simply because their socialism-driven government controlled bureaucracy-infested economy is not creating jobs. Blaming tradition and such is easy, and you can educate that medieval mindset as much as you want, but alas! it is not the limiting constraint there. The job supply and job creation rate is far less than job demand and new workers created per year from India's population trends.

1. We do the same to families of convicted sex offenders. See Farkas & Miller (December 2007). Reentry and reintegration: Challenges faced by the families of convicted sex offenders. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 20 (2), 88.

2. Are we barbarians in the way we treat sex offenders and their families in the United States? Did you ever check the effect on the family of the convicted sex offender. The impact of Meghan Law, and Jacob Wetterling Act, here in America, on families of sex offenders is worse than these Indians.

a. See Lasher & McGarth (February, 2012), The Impact of Community Notification on Sex Offender Reintegration: A Quantitative Review of the Research Literature; International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 56: 6-28;

This woman is one of the victims of the attack, if indirectly. Her husband didn't consider the consequences to his wife, because she wasn't of any consequence to him in the his daily activities. That is just the unfortunate culture she has been born into, and the reason for the article. We are to see how difficult life is for women like these, and perhaps remind us all of how fortunate we are here in the Western World.

The Pakistani's would of done the same if not worse. The whole region is brain dead. If this woman would of been raped she would of be held some how responsible. Its a crazy region the is ruled by darkness

Bryan, you are an idiot and clueless to how the world works. As I pointed out above, even if you have a fraction of the population of India that is "modernized" you are talking about a number of people LARGER than the population of most countries. If the majority of the population feels that their traditions are more important than any amount of money, then why should those that choose to "advance" be punished on account of them.

Pirsig pointed out that the Middle Ages were just a return to a way of life that had existed for centuries that had only been temporarily interrupted by the Greeks. Plato himself pointed out that there had been civilizations in the past and that they had all destroyed themselves.

What YOU consider to be "normal" is artificial and is the outlier of how the VAST majority of the people live and have lived throughout the millenia and is temporary and will also return to way things have been for thousands of years before.

Bryan: "In the US, where there is much economic suffering for those formerly part of the middle class, the wrong priorities are assigned first for military expenditures and second, to space exploration."

That is false. We are spending the majority of our tax dollars on entitlement programs. These programs, managed by government are collapsing. What do we do? Continue to expand them. The system will at some point collapse.

You can't see how the vast amount we have paid for space exploration has given us returns which justify it? I could say the same for big government programs.

A country needs to prioritize its expenditures. In times of domestic suffering, the first priority should be for its people. India's Mars exploration seems mostly to be a leap for prestige among nations. But a country that does not take care of its own, and has enormous wealth gaps is asking for trouble, and rightly so.

In the US, where there is much economic suffering for those formerly part of the middle class, the wrong priorities are assigned first for military expenditures and second, to space exploration. I can't see how the vast amount we have paid for space exploration has given us returns which justify it.

@Brayn : Agree. but let me give you very simple and practical example why space exploration is really helpful for a big country like a India. e.g. Satellite launch in US costs somewhere around $ 250 million dollars (source: http://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite8.htmhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-30/india/41617825_1_advanced-communication-satellite-gslv-gsat-7) while same in India costs around $ 78 million. That is less than one third. So if India doesn't develop its own space program - it will have no option but to be dependent on his rich friends i.e. USA, European Union etc. Then India will end up spending more money on those launches. I am not denying the fact that government should take care of poor people, and let me tell you Indian government is actually trying (e.g. free education till Class 12 - food program/scholarships to promote more girls in the education) but you need to understand fundamental problem here. It is not about the money and I really want to stress my point. It is about underlying culture. It will take some time and one generation before you will start enjoying fruit of your labor. I really want you to visit India - then you will realize enthusiasm and optimism . Yes, they are in pain but there is a hope. And I am not trying to be optimist but I am being very realist.

P.S. These satellites are used for various purpose e.g. positioning systems to help rescue workers. Weather report e.g. recently India faced severe threat of cyclone but because of early weather reports - only 44 causalities were there (in 1999 - around 10000 people died).

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